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There is a reason most well-known designers point to one book as the backbone to their typographic success. You would be hard-pressed to find a more complete history of typographic style anywhere. It would also seem impossible to find a more succinct set of “best-practices” that designers can start applying to their craft today. Combining those two mammoth tasks in an unimposing book is a tough task.

The History of Typography

If you are looking in Robert Bringhurst’s direction for a simple “guide to being a better designer,” there will plenty of useful tidbits to be worth the money and the time reading it. But just be ready for his strong focus on the history of type. While being extremely interesting, it often feels like you need to jump between mindsets frequently. You start reading with immediacy in the hope that you’ll find some design knowledge that you’ve never had before. Bringhurst successfully slows you down with sentences like, “Printing from movable type was first invented not in Germany in the 1450s as Europeans often claim, but in China in the 1040s.”

His Wealth of Knowledge

There can be absolutely no debating that Bringhurst knows exactly what he is talking about more than any fictitious genius character that I could dream up. I’m not ashamed to admit that the depth of his writing often required me to re-read sentences (or pages) just to soak it all in. If you’ve ever read Plato or Descartes, the process doesn’t feel all that different. Each sentence is so compact with reason and detail, you need to slow down your normal reading speed to really capture all of the information presented.

For the Skimmers

If you’re not ready to invest in a deeper understanding of typographic tradition, you don’t have to. When Bringhurst is giving us pointers on solid typography, he starts off each with a succinct title. It is always short title that perfectly explains the following one or two paragraphs. Some examples are:

• If the text is meant to invite continuous reading, set it in columns that are clearly taller than wide.
• Choose faces whose individual spirit and character is in keeping with the text.
• Use as many levels of headings as you need: no more and no fewer.
• Adjust the type and the spaces within the textblock using typographic increments, but rely on free proportions to adjust the empty space.

Injecting Integrity

If you want to be a designer (print or web) that brings more integrity to their design work, you should understand many of the principles presented in The Elements of Typographic Style. There were countless times when I learned I had been doing something the wrong way – not subjectively – but by missing undeniable standards for setting text. Put simply, if you read this book appropriately by slowing down and paying attention, you will become better at using the building block of good design.